And now, via The Beat, a rebuttal (of sorts) to the 12-year-old girl demographic’s view of the comic shop by the seven-year-old boy demographic.
I’m sure you’ll be shocked at what you’ll find.
For another perspective, All Ages R…

As far as what he should or shouldn’t be reading, as Scott pointed out, I don’t pick the books for him. Unless he tries to read something like Punisher or Kick-Ass (which he has tried to pick up because he liked seeing ‘Kick-Ass’ on a cover and he thinks Punisher is cool) I let him choose what he wants.

He’s an intelligent kid. He followed the plot of Dark Knight and understood some of the more subtle details of the film even better than my father, haha. He does this with a lot of movies. And he has similar tastes with comics. He likes to be challenged by what he watches and what he reads, so if something looks like it may be harder for him to process, I don’t try to talk him out of it.

I didn’t think he would like Venom: Dark Origins because the symbiote isn’t in the book and that’s what he likes. But he actually enjoyed it and he ‘got’ it. He would have preferred if the symbiote was in the book, sure, but he still enjoyed what he read and was able to understand everything that happened in the story. His choices and reactions often surprise me but I like it that way.

I think one reason kids don’t read the mainstream superhero books is because the stories/artwork/whatever is boring. But then again this is something that comics have always faced. Osamu Tezuka used to face the same issues when he wrote and drew stories for “Astro Boy”.

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080619-AllAgesReads.html

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080721-AllAgesReads.html

All columns archived at allagesreads.blogspot.com

Tracy